I thought she was dead. Then I read an article in the New York Times a few weeks ago that she had planned a gala 90th birthday bash on July 3 that went terribly wrong. Two hundred and sixty people…
An ongoing conversation I have a friend who successfully manages his own stock portfolio and is constantly encouraging me to do the same. He has a knack for finding companies that are undervalued. A few years ago, he called and…
Sitting at my seminary desk and reviewing the material for an upcoming lecture, I heard my cell phone buzzing and put it to my ear: “Tom, you are not going to believe what I just found.” It was my brother…
All of us are aware of the biblical phrase, “they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” Some of us recognize that these words are found in the eschatological vision of Isaiah (repeated in Micah).…
When I was still a relatively young professor, I played on the seminary basketball team. In the second game of the season, I planted my left foot and made a hard cut toward the basket. My foot slipped on a…
The man wore a blazing-yellow shirt open at his chest. With thumbs hooked into the pockets of his black pants, he addressed a group of teachers from seminaries in the United States and Canada. He was born somewhere north of…
A few years ago, a woman from West Michigan, Rachel, traveled to southern Mexico in order to teach music and English in the tiny village of Berriozabal, not far from the larger but hardly better known village of Tuxtle. The…
By Tom Boogaart I am coming to the end of a long teaching career at Western Theological Seminary and beginning to sort through the piles of notes, lectures, sermons, and essays that have accumulated over the years, much of the…
By Tom Boogaart In chapter 12 of the Gospel of John, Jesus announces, “The hour has come...” (23), and with these words the focus of the Gospel shifts. Knowing that his hour of death is near, Jesus turns his attention to…
by Tom Boogaart In late November my wife Judy and I took our three young granddaughters on a walk, and we passed by a crèche that had been set up in a park near our cottage. It consisted of large,…
